Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday July 16, 2012 @09:31AM
from the I'll-take-a-bag-full dept.

hypnosec writes "Raspberry Pi, the small $35 ARM-based computer system capable of running Linux that took the world of technology by storm just a few months back, has its order limit shackles removed as it has been revealed that manufacturers are now producing 4000 units per day. The Raspberry Pi Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the tiny computer, has said that RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell have started producing enough units to allow them to scrap the order limit on Raspberry Pi. In a blog post, the foundation made the announcement. Initially the limit of one unit per customer was placed in the light of limited stocks. Despite these limits, there was always a shortage and people had to wait for long time to get their hands on one of these credit card sized computers."

If you ordered from RS, check your spam folder. They send their emails from odd domains in their control...for example their website is rswww.$TLD. However your email might be from sales@$TLD.radionics.com and within the email say it's coming from rsonline.

Basically although they're a fantastic company to deal with they really do not have their head around managing their domains and are harming themselves by unintentionally sending a few spam triggers.

It sure would be nice if the R-Pi foundation could have found some competent resellers to do business with somewhere in the world.

It would also be nice if shipping didn't cost more than I can get an Arduino bought and shipped for. That's not about competence, that's about greed on the part of the resellers they chose to work with.

When did you sign up? I did about three weeks ago. My email that allowed me to order came through today. I placed an order and sadly it said about 11 weeks to shipping. I can't imagine how backlogged it will be when they get larger orders coming through.

The RaspberryPi actually seems to max at about 2MB/s per my tests at a 1500MTU, and over 4.4MB/s at 1492MTU.

Many protocols such as SSH have high overhead, but a low-overhead protocol can expect these numbers.

The problem is the "B" model's Ethernet port is really a USB-to-Ethernet adapter connected to the processor's USB host controller. Couple that with a relatively weak ARM11 processor (really that CPU is meant to drive the VideoCore 4 graphics processor - basically to feed the beast with data so customers

The RaspberryPi actually seems to max at about 2MB/s per my tests at a 1500MTU, and over 4.4MB/s at 1492MTU.

Sounds as if something is broken in your setup. The only reason for that huge difference is something which introduces IP fragmentation for pretty much every datagram.

Many protocols such as SSH have high overhead, but a low-overhead protocol can expect these numbers.

"Overhead" is maybe not the best term here. Compression and ciphering (i.e. CPU usage) easily becomes the bottleneck
in bulk data transfer over ssh, but those are some of the features which make ssh attractive!

Remember how the OLPC "inspired" Asus to bring out the EeePC and thus started the NetBook revolution (subsequently nipped by the iPad)? The EeePC being the beefier machine, even if the specs were underwhelming to the power user, Asus managed to steal the thunder and the sales away from the OLPC. Will the Raspberry Pi inspire a similar revolution in ultra-small form factor motherboards? I know my next motherboard won't be larger than mini-ITX, but I would be willing to shell a few extra bucks to have a full-powered, if not full-featured, desktop computer no larger than a consumer router.

I just saw something that fits the small Android PC slot perfectly:http://www.fanlesstech.com/2012/07/minix-tv-box-h24.htmlIts an Android PC designed for TVs, but maybe ideal for my small PC needs, already can run Ubuntu, but I want it for Android.

VIA have already promoted the APC [ http://www.apc.io/ [www.apc.io] ] which was open for preorder and is now closed / sold-out. Although most of these devices, being simply bare boards, are completely unsuitable for domestic use and even more unsuitable for classroom use they might just make developers take the ARM / Linux platform seriously. I would hope that will be the takeaway from this whole initiative: that there's more to computing than PCs - oh, yeah, and apples too.

One of the big pushes by vendors have been the HTPC segment. By the time you actually get a working rPi, with case and power supply, you've already matched prices with many of the Allwinner A10 based solutions. Not to mention, NO ONE gets an rPi for $35. Turns out $35 actually translates into $55 + $10 power + $15 case, for a total of roughly $85. You can get a superior solution for up to $20 less than that, delivered. On top of that, the A10 solutions frequently have real SATA, builtin in WIFI, a faster CP

Can I run Debian on the A10? With hardware floating point? Are binary blobs required? This is what is really needed to beat the RPi. I don't need more CPU or RAM or SATA, I need plain vanilla Debian and full use of the hardware.

Well, technically it is true until something actually ships and my statement wasn't meant to stand fit eternity just got right now. Like I said though, if somebody can link me to a shipping device that has modern performance and is Free, I'll buy right now.

Can I run Debian on the A10? With hardware floating point? Are binary blobs required?

On paper you should be able to - it's an ARM Cortex-A8 which is enough to run the Debian releases with hardware floating point, and you might even be able to get unaccelerated graphics working without using any blobs. Open source hardware acceleration is still stuck in the reverse-engineering stages.

I got mine for $35. I run it without a case. I already have a USB charger that came with my phone, and I always charge my phone from my computer anyway so I could just use that. The display is my old television via composite video. I already have an ethernet lead. I already have a spare USB keyboard. Actually the TV and the keyboard were both redundant once I had enabled ssh, I just use X11 forwarding over ssh.

Well, mine was $35 plus I think $6 shipping, I plugged it into a spare phone charger I had lying around and it currently has no case, but I was planning on using a cardboard box. I haven't even had to buy a cable for it. So yeah I really honestly did spend a whopping $41, nothing like $85 (seriously is that even much money?).

Considering I was in the market for a HTPC and I was looking at AMD all-in-one fanless systems (~$150) with a nice case (~$150), I think I'm doing ok here.

VIA APC has the same problem as R-Pi, but even moreso. VIA wants a fucking mint to ship it. Why is it that Dealextreme can send me a tablet from China for free but VIA needs thirty bucks? Is it just because of the stupidly gigantic shipping box?

MiniX looks like the hotness right now for the price point, but it would be nice to have more RAM.

You're right, it does come out to almost $70, although you left out a few purchases.

5 dollar supply [adafruit.com] in a free case(if you buy from RS, the shipping box makes an excellent case, better than element14 which shipped a crappy chipboard box with one layer of bubblewrap), and a RPi that only cost me $5 or $7 in shipping because I bought from a local branch instead of the UK headquarters of the distributor.

Including shipping for the power supply(approx $3.87 if I bought it alone, actually less) and a 1 meter HDMI/

There are two models, the A (which hasn't been released yet) has a nominal price of $25 while the B has a nominal price of $35.

However those nominal prices do not include shipping, tax or handling (the first two are understandable but the third seems a little slimy to me). The real all-in price here in the UK seems to be about £30.

They have to variants (model A and model B). The cheaper one was originally going to have 128Mb RAM (it will now have the same 256Mb). It will be missing a USB port (it will have one rather than two) and won't have any built-in networking (the model B has a 10/100 wired NIC). The Model A is not yet available at all though, so quoting the Pi as being a $25 machine is a little misleading for the time being.

Since we're on the subject -- NetBSD is being ported to the RaspberryPi, despite all the roadblocks in place to do so. (RPi is not an open platform) It is booting to multiuser in test code. See hubertf's post [feyrer.de] on the subject. I intend to help test as soon as my unit arrives.

You know I want one. I want to support their non-profit, and its a cool thing but... and there is a big but....

I just bought a few TP-Links. There is one you can get (wr700n) for about $15-25 (have to look around), can run Openwrt. With Ethernet, USB host, and Wifi, powered from a miniUSB.... is pretty damned close to a rasberry pi for a few bucks less...and its tiny.

Sigh...I am glad that you posted this. I did a bit more digging, its the wr703n that I was thinking of, which is highly unfortunate, since I got the wr700n from my amazon order. Oops. Thats more than a bit dissapointing.

I bought and received mine from RS Online a little while ago (shipped to Canada). Great little toy.
I first tried the basic recommended distro (I think it was Debian Squeeze). Little bit of fuss, but it didn't take much to get up and running with X and basically having a full-fledged desktop computer. A whole lot less hassle than your typical barebones Linux install.
Then I made a modest goal of getting it up and running as a web server. I don't think it took me more than a couple hours from start to

Lifting the restriction of people ordering multiples while most of us cant even get a email with news of availability and an average roumored 12 week lead time. Tucker sold more cars than they had as well, didnt work out for them, maybe having an item in stock doesnt matter as long as the money keeps rolling in.

They should have fufilled their backorders before doing this, just another "sigh I dont want to even deal with these people anymore" move

I think part of the issue is popularity. If lots of people are using this platform, then someone who is not as creative/innovative as others can still find solutions to his/her problems.
While using a phone is clever, and cost effective, I wouldn't be able to figure it out. But, I know a few different programming languages, and I am comfortable in a linux environment, so the Raspberry Pi seems more up my alley.

It is more flexible than the old phone option though, especially for those of use who don't have one lying around.

* I'll run "full" Linux (or ?BSD) rather than Android being the only option (and not even the latest Android no doubt)
* Wired network access is possible
* A "proper" keyboard & mouse can be attached (I'm assuming the phone doesn't have a host-capable USB port)
* Other USB connected devices too for that matter
* Easy access to I/O channels for connecting non-USB things (such as motors and other custom electronics)

Of course if you have the phone hanging around you could try repurpose it, it would probably be a fun project if you are that way inclined, but I suspect the extra hassle would eat any saving from not buying a Pi or equivalent. A quick scan on eBay.co.uk suggests that you would be better off selling the old phone and putting the proceeds towards something like a Pi.

You are right that the phone does have some advantages over the Pi though (built in screen, built-in keyboard (IIRC the Dream was a slide keyboard unit?), neat little case, almost certainly smaller than a Pi+case,...) depending on what you are wanting it to do.

It is more flexible than the old phone option though, especially for those of use who don't have one lying around....
* Easy access to I/O channels for connecting non-USB things (such as motors and other custom electronics)

That's the part that interests me the most! I'm studying mechanical engineering, and I've always seen I/Cs as just a way to control where/when electricity is delivered. I like the arduino for this reason- I can access pins without having to learn a new programming language, or do any sort of memory management.
I really see the R-Pi as a more powerful arduino (unfortunately, it's more expensive- with the arduino, I can take out the atmega328 chip, add a few components on to a perf board, and make my projec

digikey is pretty expensive on micros. Newark has ATTINY85 for less than a dollar (CAD) in single quantity. It has eight times as much flash, RAM, and EEPROM of the tiny13, so you can use C on it more practically. (tiny13 only has 64b of RAM... pretty hurtin' unit, really.)

For less than double that, you can get a mega168 though, same thing used on the earlier arduinos. It's got double everything the 85 has, plus real serial devices and far more IO. (the USI on some of the tinys is pretty odd to use. and on

I have an original Motorola Droid sitting in a drawer I'm thinking of re purposing into a smart thermostat. It's going to need a helper and the Pi is way overkill for that. I'll probibly use an Aduino [arduino.cc], which is still way overkill, or roll my own interface with a U421 [usbmicro.com] and let the droid do all the processing if I can get them talking to each other.

I was luck enough to get in on the first round of availabilty, and only had to wait 10 weeks to get it (only mostly sarcastic), and it's been a great unit. It's given me a platform to work on and learn far more about cross-compiling, working in a small(er) footprint, and generally programming in general.

Currently, I'm working to make it the core of a computer concept for my car. Will it be as good as stuff "off the shelf?" ~Really~ unlikely. Will it be a whole lotta fun getting it going? You betcha! And so far, I've only shelled out about US$45 for the Raspberry Pi and some wiring to get started on this project.

Small, very cheap (proper computers are at least ten times as expensive), and can be run from a small pack of AA batteries.

If I need something that fits any of those criteria and doesn't require massive general computing power then the Pi is perfect.

Robotics, small distributed experiments, mucking around with programming, seeing what can be done, fitting a computer (almost) into an Altoids tin, low power.... I would say that at $35 this is pretty awesome. Heck, as it has the capability to decode HD video and has a USB port, WiFi, and a SD slot then it works fine as a main video computer, just connected to an old LCD. Great for the kids' room.

Oh yeah, and it's silent. Because of the low power it doesn't require fans.

I now have five of these in my possession with one lent to a friend whose wife keeps him on a very short leash financially. And I had one arduino that was fun to tinker with but I'm more excited about these just because of the prospect of the numbers. Even if I never write one line of code that utilizes this board specifically, there are going to be hundreds of projects developed by hobbyists, teachers, students, etc that are going to target this particular chipset more than any other just based purely on the numbers game. And, I must admit jealously as an American, many UK students that take CS courses are going to come out of high school fully versed in this particular chipset with free time and college and on their hands to make exciting or entertaining projects with it. And the $25/$35 price point really enables that. I'm much more daring with these boards because I have five of them (if I burned out my arduino mega that'd be a painful learning experience). And since I have five, one is hooked up to a USB drive with all my movies and music to my TV. Another is permanently attached to a monitor with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Another is simply on the network and I can SSH into it and run code on it.

Lastly I'd add that they are simple. Buy a $300 machine from Dell and watch something go bad on it at some point in time. There's not a lot to go bad on these devices but they haven't been around long enough to test their reliability of MTTF in the wild. So I could eat my words on that point but so far they run like a champ for me with no defects.

Frankly put, the pervasive nature of this product is going to make any code you write for it consumable by many people -- the demand is so high one can only speculate on how high that number will become. I'm definitely sending some of these to my younger cousins that have shown an interest in computer science and I hope the schools in the US make an effort to leverage these devices.

"I'm much more daring with these boards because I have five of them (if I burned out my arduino mega that'd be a painful learning experience)."..why? isn't an arduino mega obtainable shipped to your house overnight(or in two) for the base price of pi?

in couple of years there's going to be plenty of similar offerings on the market. right now you can buy about similarly specced android boxes for 80-100 bucks or so if you order from china(that come with psu, remote controller etc).

Actually.... overall I prefer the aduino. The price on these is great for what you get but, as an educational/devel platform.... the issues with broadcom that are evident int he FAQ make this very unattractive.

The arduino is, at its heart, just a breakout for the atmega with a nice boot loader pre-burned. I can work up a design, then if I want to go into some manner of production and make alot...I can incorperate the atmega directly into my design, and go from a $30 part "development platform" to a $3 part with a few bits of support (crystal, voltage regulator...)

I can't do that with pi. I am stuck with a pi. I can develop on a pi but then, every time I want to replicate the design, its another pi.

Its great for what it is, and it may lead to the development of more fully open platforms but, for what I am looking at, I see little advantage over just getting a linux capable wifi router and starting from there. In fact, the wifi itself makes it even better.

But overall, for what I need, I also don't need much more than an atmega.

The Arduino and RPi are fundamentally two different kinds of device, and aren't really comparable other than both being low cost and both having GPIO pins. The RPi really is more low cost personal computer with easy to access GPIO, rather than a microcontroller development board. They both have their place.

The Broadcom issue (which although I like the RPi, grates with me) is lack of public documentation on the GPU. Having said that it is already known how to get a plain simple frame buffer and get it to boot into a roll-your-own-kernel of your own design (i.e. not a linux kernel) if you're not looking to use the advanced GPU features, so the situation is better than it was a while ago.

Ahh I read through the FAQ but didn't realise that was just the GPU. Not so bad then.

Still it depends what you need it for, I see some uses for these. However, most of what I need is more in the arduino space. I kind of assumed if we were comparing the two, then we are not comparing on advanced features like the more general linux tools being available (which is huge) and the video support, which, is nice and great for some things, but not so useful for a lot of projects.

if I want to go into some manner of production and make alot...I can incorperate the atmega directly into my design, and go from a $30 part "development platform" to a $3 part with a few bits of support (crystal, voltage regulator...)

You don't really need either of those. ATmega chips have an internal 16Mhz clock and aren't very fussy about voltage. The only reason you'd need a regulator is if the things you connect to it need a regulated supply.

But yeah, a $3 chip and a piece of perf board are all you need for the production version of your Arduino project. You can even get the chips with less legs and make things really tiny, eg eight pin Arduino [sparkfun.com].

Why would you use tiny one-board computer when full computers aren't that expensive and, for that matter, the price probably isn't issue. You can get much better devices that way.

I think people are too often thinking Raspberry Pi as a mini-sized desktop computer, while it mainly targets simple programming and a basis for various embedded projects. R-Pi more like a really powerful Arduino. It's painful to read stories about people trying to cram some full-fledged linux distro into it.

But yes, if you really want a general-purpose mini desktop machine with lots of bang for the buck, I recommend getting a used netbook and forgetting R-Pi.

I think people are too often thinking Raspberry Pi as a mini-sized desktop computer,

To all those people:

It's got 256Mb RAM. I don't know how lean-and-mean their OS is but I doubt it can open more than a couple of windows before you run out. I'm not even sure Firefox could open a couple of pages without using it up.

When you run out of RAM you're swapping to an SD card. Think about that for a moment...

Well mine is running XBMC very happily using raspbmc, and will output 1080p. It really wasn't that long ago that 256mb ram was decent. It isn't that snappy in a desktop environment, but really, we aren't talking about a particularly limited set of capabilities here.

First, there is inexpensive, and then there is lunch-money inexpensive. Once you get to the price of a couple $20 bills, it becomes an impulse buy, no need to budget it.Second, size / heat / power draw are big issues (no fan).Third, unlike many other ARM-based devices, this one boots directly off the SD card. So it makes it much harder to "brick" than, say, re-purposing a home router with a Linux distro. And, most of the other similar type devices don't have video / audio out, so they are only suitable for network use or as an embedded controller.

As for what projects I'm using this for:1) Simple NAS type device to dump backups to -- I have a network based backup daemon running on it with a restricted protocol, which makes it very resilient to being attacked by malware on other boxes that I'm backing up.2) My parents have an LCD TV in their kitchen -- I am planning on hooking one of these up so they can use it as a kitchen computer (wireless keyboard, look up recipes, play card games, etc).3) Also, I can give one to my Dad to hook up as a spare computer, that would allow him to click on anything without getting into trouble (one of his friends is always forwarding stuff, some of which may link back to a drive-by download site).

$500 school computer: "Right kids, it's 3 to a keyboard for the duration of a lesson. You can sign up for access during after-school club. Don't break anything because the next lesson needs the computers too. We won't have the PC lab next week because Mr Jones' class wants to take a turn.

$500 home computer: "Don't break it, Mummy wants to use Facebook after you've gone to bed"

$25 board: The PTA has signed up a sponsor so every pupil gets their own.

Also the Pi is designed for really simple recovery. Flash a new SD card and start again with a clean slate.

Before you run too far with this, most kids will need more than $25 to get started. A monitor, keyboard etc. or a separate PC to ssh from. It all adds up.

True, but they Pi team observed that there's loads of keyboards and mice going to landfill. For a display, there's composite to an old TV (sounds awful, but we managed in the 80s/90s) HDMI to a new TV, or get a dedicated monitor. It *is* a shame the Pi has no analogue VGA for all the CRT VGA monitors going begging.

It is a good learning tool. You probably don't want to disable your regular computer while experimenting w/ it, but w/ this, you can experiment to your heart's content w/o disrupting the computing needs of both yourself and others - such as web browsing, e-mail, printing documents and so on.

I actually had gotten to an order page a while ago, this was way after the initial rush. Placed the order (Element 14) in April, and just got it last Friday. I also got an invitation to order it from RS about a couple weeks ago.

The order site still says 12 weeks delivery time. Obviously the manufacturing ramp up is not keeping up with orders. Maybe removing the order limit is still a bad idea. Maybe just raising it to a few (schools can order more) would be better.